If you like wasting your time on pointless activities, join us as we talk to Chris Lear from the Magpie Crossword Magazine and discuss why humans enjoy puzzles.

In this podcast, we explore the weird and wonderful world of the cryptic crossword community. We also try to solve the puzzle of why we willingly devote time and energy to tasks which are deliberately designed to be difficult and have no obvious benefits. Finally, you can try your hand at answering one of our guest’s fiendish clues. Answers on a postcard to Aleph Insights.

A few things we mentioned in this podcast:

• Magpie Crossword Magazine
• Categories of insight
• Need for Cognition
• Need for Cognition and the Big 5
• SPOILER ALERT: Chris Lear gives an example clue in this episode. Want to check the answer after you have listened? Scroll to the bottom of these notes.

. . . . Answer to Chris Lear's example clue:

‘Taylor’s hit a brown-to-black clearance?’. The answer to this is ‘TWENTY-TWO’, and the clue is in a particular cryptic form known as the ‘double definition’. In this case, the two definitions are ‘Taylor’s hit’ and ‘a brown-to-black clearance’. The first definition refers to Taylor Swift’s 2012 hit ‘22’, and the second is the score for a brown-to-black clearance in snooker. What makes this a great clue is the consistency of the ‘surface reading’ (what it looks like the clue means), which seems to refer to the 1980s snooker legend Dennis Taylor. In addition, the clue has several components that might mislead a cryptic crossword fan - e.g. the word ‘hit’ which could indicate an anagram, the word ‘black’ which often means the letter ‘b’, and the word ‘Taylor’ which might look like an alternative spelling for ‘tailor’, which again could indicate an anagram.

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, produced by me, Fraser McGruer of Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and also we have with us this week a special guest, Chris Lear of the Magpie Crossword magazine. And this week, we're discussing why we like puzzles. And unusually, because of the lockdown, we are recording this remotely.

Nick, introduce us to Chris. Tell us all about Chris. Well, I've known Chris for many years. I think it's got to be at least a decade. And I got to know him through the board game circuit. He knows various of the same people play board games. And during one of our many board game playing sessions, it emerged that he is a crossword supremo. And now I like crosswords. I try and do the Times crossword whenever I've got a copy of it. Occasionally, perhaps three or four times a year, I have a crack at the listener, see if I can get that finished. But Chris is way beyond this level of crossword skill. So he's, he laughs at the Times crossword and criticizes the listener for being too easy. And in fact, creates his own amazing crossword puzzles and is my go to person really for any crossword clues I don't understand. He will always get back to me and explain why that's the answer. And it always seemed obvious in hindsight. But what better person to have on a podcast where we're discussing the mystery of puzzles and why do we like doing them?

Okay. And Chris, beyond Nick's initial introduction, is there anything else that you can tell us about yourselves? What's your background? Is compiling crosswords, is that your full time thing? Or is there much more to you?

I, I'm just going to correct slightly something that Nick said, in case anybody who does crosswords is listening to this. I don't laugh at the Times crossword and I don't consider the listener crossword beneath me at all. The Times crossword is a fantastic piece of work every day. The listener is an amazing thing. And probably the biggest sort of crossword challenge kind of out there. If people haven't heard of the listener crossword, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a themed crossword. It's a bit more advanced than the normal back of the Times one. The perhaps what for the purposes of this podcast, what you need to know about me is that I actually got the job as one of the editors of the Magpie crossword magazine, which I got that job mainly because I'm a computer geek. So I kind of got that job because I could set up a website and publish the magazine online. I was never the, I was never the huge expert from the point of view of the Magpie. I was a pretty good solver and I did solve the Magpie in its pre online days. And I'm still a pretty good solver of the Magpie crossword, but I'm not amazing. I'm okay. In, in the, in the, in the realms of the people that I know. Okay. So that's my day job is very much computer geek and I do crosswords in my spare time and being the editor of a crossword magazine or co-editor. There are five of us is not a full time job at all. And I set puzzles about once a year. And for that, I get nothing. So it's not the, the people, the people who aren't editors send in puzzles and they get paid. So it's, we pay 90 quid, I think it's not bad, but for some reason we don't pay the editors when they set puzzles. So there you go. Okay. I get dinner. I get dinner once a year, so it's kind of worth

it. Having tried to create crosswords, hard ones. I've, I've realized that that 90 pounds is, is going to be spread pretty thin. If you're going to put in the time, really, I think it would be hard to make a full-time career out of that. It's a really time consuming process trying to set a good crossword. I haven't yet set one, which is anywhere near the standard

that Chris would accept in the magpie. So it's true that there are very few full-time professional

crossword writers. Okay. Right. Bad news though, because usually when we have a guest like this, we really go to town and we, it tends to be a slightly longer podcast. I think this is going to be really short and I'll tell you why. It may surprise listeners to know that I actually pretty much never do any research for these, for these podcasts. I leave that to the brains of the outfit. But I did a bit of research on this one and I've got it over here in front of me, page, first result from Google. Why do people like puzzles? Cause that's what we wanted to discuss today. Why do people like puzzles? It says humans have an innate quality for pattern finding, for trying to find meaning in things. Next one says, or two down from that says we like to solve things and to bring chaos, sorry, bring order to chaos, not vice versa. And so it gives meaning to the human mind. Bish, bosh, podcast done. Thank you very much. Right. That's it. Yeah. I mean, or, or have I oversimplified things? God forbid that I would ever do that. Who wants to wade? Well, Chris, I mean, how do you want to start things off? Or Nick, if you've got a question, if you want to guide Chris, what would you prefer to do? I think, I think let's just set the,

set the kind of underlying problem here, which is that a puzzle as we, as we're talking about them here is someone has deliberately gone out of their way to, to create a pointless, hard task for you to do, right? They've made something hard that doesn't actually have any benefit at all, other than resverting it to the state it was in before they scrambled it up and made it hard to solve. That is a very wasteful seeming activity. So there is a big challenge there in explaining what, why we would get any pleasure from devoting time to doing this. You know, why is it, why is it, I mean, it seems like an incredible waste of time really, but so that's the, what do you, well, I suppose it'd be interesting to know what Chris, Chris L gets out of, gets out of solving crosswords

from a subjective point of view to start off with. Okay. What I get out of it rather than why I do it sort of work. I think, yeah. Are they, are they different questions? Okay, well, let's go for what I get out of it. I asked, I asked a few of my co-editors what, why they solve crosswords and we got a variety of answers, which are pretty similar, but I think on the, on the, on the, what you get out of it rather than, which I think is slightly different from why you do it in the first place, what you get out of it, I think is a, is dopamine. That's what I think you get out of it. And so, so basically when you, there are, there's a moment when you solve something it's, and it's the, the, the, the phrase in the, in the terminology is the aha moment. We sometimes call it a PDM, which stands for the penny drop moment, the aha moment. And it's, you can really tell when you've had it and it was a really great clue and you, and you crack it or a really great idea and you solve it and you, you realize basically you've, you've defeated the problem that's been set for you and, and you feel good. There you are. That's what you get out of it.

Could you, it'd be really cool. I think there, there are people out there. I know this may sound surprising, but I think it's possible that some of our listeners aren't familiar with the sort of British cryptic crossword as a concept. Could you perhaps give us a good example of a clue with a, with a penny drop moment and talk us through how, you know, what that penny dropping

experience was like? Okay. Here's a nice clue. So I've got an example here. So here's the clue. Now the, I'll give you the, the, the answer pattern first. It's, it's, it's quite long. It's four hyphen six comma five. So it's, it's a four letter word, hyphen six letter word, and then a five letter word. And the clue is this, they don't seem good. Nice folk don't like them.

Well, you know, there's, there's one, there's one thing solving crosswords. Isn't easy for me at the best of times when at one time I can never do it is when it's under pressure. If someone's

watching you, I'm not expecting you to solve this here and now it's, it's, it's, it's not very easy. The answer is so yeah, the answer is four letter words. Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, the whole, the whole,

this is what I think this is, is this what they call an and lit clue. So, which is, which I think is considered really one of the finest forms of crossword clue, right? Where the, the whole clue somehow is an example of the, of the thing that you're, that you're, that you're cluing, right? The, the, the, what the answer is, if you look at the clue, all of the, all of the words in it are four letter words. That's awesome. Oh, wow. That's good. Isn't it?

You see, you've, you've just had the moment. I did. I mean, you've had it and by the way, um, you know, the first hit is the best one. You never get the same thing again. So frankly, you're best off never doing another crossword in your life. Yeah. Because, um, you know,

you never reached that high again. Also, what's interesting, you could solve that. Um, and maybe not necessarily realize that bit that you just talked about where all the letters in the clue are also four letters as well. Although if you're the sort of person who can solve that, you probably would notice that as well. Sound about right? All true. Yes. Yeah.

That's quite often, quite often the case, you get to the end of a puzzle and you've got all the answers, right. But there's one or two, you're not quite sure why.

Is that reasonable? That's what I want to know, because I, I like cryptic crosswords. Uh, and there are times where I, I've got the answer simply because you've got, you know, three of the three of the letters in it. Uh, but you can't quite work it out. Is that solving the crossword

or not? Um, well, there are no rules. I'm just, it's an outrageous thing to say. There are no actual rules. If you've got the answer, but if you could send it in a winner prize, then you've solved it. But, um, people set themselves a kind of, uh, well, people like to, people like to solve on their own quite often. There are a lot of people who don't like help because they consider that kind of a bit wrong. Uh, I think, I think solving crosswords is an excellent social activity personally. So I don't have any problem with, um, doing it with other people. Uh, there are people who would think it's a bit wrong if you, um, yeah, there are people who would feel a bit like funny about thinking they've solved it when they haven't like put all the bricks into place type thing. My personal thing is I think it's cheating to look up the answer on the internet and just fill it in from there. That's my, that's my personal one. Right. So here, I think we're

touching on something really important here, which is the kind of, I think we're touching on the kinds of things which, um, this experience of solving things is what, what, what constitutes, you know, the fun because we are not actually after the answer as, as, um, you know, uh, Chris Wragg is saying, um, it doesn't feel right to simply get the answer. It doesn't, you, because you haven't had that, uh, the feeling of actually having uncracked the, the clue. And then least of all, I mean, the worst thing that can happen when you're trying to get, solve a crossword is someone else gives you the bloody answer. It's like, you are not solving a crossword because you want the answer. You don't want to know what the answer is. What you want is to experience the process of finding that answer yourself. So that, and I think that, so that tells you something really important. I think perhaps non-crossword people don't necessarily understand that. Certainly people who try and give you a hand with the crossword. I, I very rarely snap at strangers, but I was doing the, I was doing the times one day on the tube and someone said, Oh, number 14 is really easy. And I, and I, I actually exploded. I was really angry. Um, and, uh, and, uh, yeah. So I think, I think there's, so there's something that's a good clue to what, you know, what it is that people are after they're after that experience. I mean, in terms of the sort of, um, in terms of the process that people go through, uh, it clearly is not a kind of purely enumerative process. That's, and I think that's, that's this thing about the aha moment tells us that what we're, what we're trying to describe, I think is this very numinous concept of an insight, which is almost like you have where you have sort of realized that you've been using a certain assumption and you break that assumption and suddenly realize that that, that assumption has been the thing holding you back. That's sort of how it feels to me subjectively.

Yeah. I think that's why I don't like, um, Sudoku because, um, my, my sort of, you know, I, I know you can exhaustively solve them, right. You know, through, through sort of exhaustive computation. And so, so I don't sort of, um, and you could say, well, you could try every possible combination of letters in a cryptic crossword, you know, um, and sooner or later you'd get there. So I suppose the same thing does apply, but, but there's something about, um, a puzzle which requires a moment of inspiration that is, um, that is the thing you're, you're searching for. Um, and I think this idea that Nick was talking about, have you not, you know, you're not searching for the answer. A good example of that is, is a jigsaw puzzle, right? You're not actually, uh, when completing a jigsaw puzzle, you're not trying to find out what the picture is generally. I mean, there are some jigsaws where that is the case. Uh, but in general terms, you know what the picture is. It's on the front of the front of the box, but the, it's the process and the, you know, realizing which piece goes, goes where, when it's particularly tricky one, that is the, um, the, the sort of the point at which you, you get the, the hit from the, from the puzzle, I suppose.

No, I mean, that's exactly right. I can, um, and, and I have the same attitude to Sudoku, I'm afraid. Um, I don't do Sudoku partly because I'm bad at them and partly because I know I've got this kind of mathematicians, a solution exists thing, you know, you know, in maths, you can say, you know, a solution exists and then mathematicians will leave it at that. The rest is just calculation. You know, I have that feeling about Sudoku that it can be done by a computer and therefore it's sort of fundamentally, um, yeah, it lacks the, it lacks the aha, but, um, I will point people to, um, the incredible success of the Cracking the Cryptic, um, YouTube channel, which is run by two of my co-editors. Uh, they started off trying to talk about cryptic puzzles on YouTube, cryptic crosswords on YouTube, but now they almost exclusively solve Sudoku and it's incredibly popular. And they, one of the reasons they're so popular is because they go on about how exciting and fabulous the logic is and how, um, and how amazing the mind of the person who, who devised it is because you can follow this extraordinary. And basically they make Sudoku sound, um, worth solving, uh, which, which, which is the problem I've always had with Sudoku. But also then it's not worth solving for me because I'm so bad at them. And I, you know, I, I, I still, I'm still not going to do it, unfortunately, but it's worth watching. They're

fun to watch. I've got so many questions I want to ask you. So I'm just going to put them all out there and let's see if we address them or not. Um, the, the, the first one is, um, I'm interested in what other puzzles you're in, you, that you, that you like doing other than, than crosswords. That's the first thing. The second thing I was wondering if there's a difference between the people who put together the crosswords, who compose them, compile them, whatever the word is and those who do them, or is it essentially the same kind of person is I'm just wondering if there's a difference in, you know, how those minds work or what the kind of personality is. And then we've got a third one, which is that, um, I'm actually not a fan of crosswords and, and actually, um, and I think the reason why is something I've noticed, for example, I don't like reading music. There's a kind of a mental block there. Uh, and, and, and, and that kind of feeling I have in my head that just that kind of grinding of gears or something blocked, I get that same feeling with, with chess annotation, for example. Um, if I try and work with chess annotation rather than just playing, and then that's how I feel in my head when I try and do a crossword, this sort of weird block sort of stuff now. So what's my question is other kinds of people who will never be crossword people, or, or I like to be one of those guys. Um, you know, how, how do I, you know, is, is, is a way to get really into crosswords by start doing some and maybe start off with simple ones. So I don't know, that's a whole bunch of mess there, but take it as you will, Chris. Well, it's fascinating that you'd like

to be one of those people. That's interesting because you want to get the girls, right? Yeah. That's what, that's what the chicks like. This is the thing. Yeah. I've always said, you know, I, the main reason I do crosswords is to impress girls. Yeah. Yeah. So it's interesting that you'd like to, cause I'm married to somebody who, um, occasionally I'll say to her something like, um, what, uh, yeah, what is a purple flower? You know, that, um, that's just, and she's about to answer cause she knows about flowers and she says, is this for a crossword? And I, and I say, yeah. And she goes, well, I'm not asking that. She basically refuses to have anything to do with crosswords. She thinks they're awful. And her main point is what is the point? What do they achieve? Nothing. A pointless, utterly, utterly pointless. And she doesn't want to do pointless activities. Now that makes perfect sense to me. I could totally understand people not wanting to do pointless activities or my favorite activities are pointless, which is why I part of the reason why I really like crosswords. I mean, board games are massively pointless. I really enjoy board games. Um, so those are the, go on Chris. Well, I was just going to say, I think

that is absolute. Um, that's absolutely it. It has to be, it has to be pointless or it's not a puzzle. It's your, it's your job. Uh, and, and the moment you make something that is, um, is pleasurable, uh, the moment you, you put necessity behind the task, it loses, it loses its appeal as far as I'm concerned. So I, I, I, maybe there's a particular type of person who likes pointless activities, but I'm definitely in that, in that category. I don't, I don't know if the

pointlessness is a side effect or integral because I think it's something to do with the process. I think it is something to do with the, the solving process, which is enjoyable. And to me, it's the fact, and I think it's interesting to think about the cryptic crossword as a sort of the high art, if you like, of this kind of particular kind of thing. I think one of the things that people, um, who don't do cryptic crosswords sometimes think about it is that there's something associative, uh, that you're kind of, the clue is meant to sort of inspire you to somehow think laterally and get an answer, which, which is a sort of leap, uh, from, from the, the, the, the clue, um, because they don't realize that actually it's, it's, it's much more logical than that. The clue has to be really, really clearly very specific about what it means, but it's just the way that you read it has to be right in order for you to, in order for you to, you've got to understand what the instructions are, but the instructions have to be there. You can't have any, I mean, the, I think the, the laws of, of crosswords, Chris, you, you'll correct me on this, but is it the sort of Zimmernian approach, right? Kind of laid down the laws of crosswords that they must say what they mean. Um, and, and I, yeah, it's, it's, it's like the British constitution.

It's, um, it's, it's a hard and fast rule, which isn't written down anywhere. Everybody knows it, but, but nobody can quite, uh, yeah. And there's, there's a couple of, there are a couple of quite well-known, um, sort of explanations of it. You have to, which way round is it? You don't have to mean what you say, but you have to say what you mean. I think it's that way around. I may not

mean what I say, but I have to say what I mean. But I mean, the one, the one rule, uh, the first rule you learn is to ignore the surface reading, isn't it? So ignore what the clue seems to, seems to mean. You no longer even think about what it means. Yeah. And the best clues are the ones

where even really experienced solvers can't, um, help reading the surface reading, but the surface reading is so, is so nice that, that, that people who are trained to ignore it kind of find themselves, um, channeled to, and then they get that moment where they go, oh, it means that,

you know. I think there are examples which are often commonly cited are things like the word number being used for an anaesthetic because it's a number or, or, or a wicked, a wicked thing being a candle, you know, those, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's so common now, but yes. And those ones aren't

going to, those ones aren't going to stump the, the, the, the, the kind of experienced solvers.

So this goes back to my question as well, um, which is the second question I asked, um, about, um, compiling crosswords. Am I using the right verb there? Is that how you, how do you, how? Yes. Compile or set. I think I, yeah, I think I set it. Yeah. Um, so when you were setting a crossword, you talked about that dopamine hit you can get when you solve it. Do you get that same hit when you are, cause you talked about a really nicely crafted clue there. Do you get that same hit when

you're crafting them when you're setting them as well? I get it when somebody likes it. That's what I get it from. I, I actually find, I find setting really hard work. Um, I find setting clues real struggle. I'm not, I'm not excellent at it. Um, but I try to, I try to make every clue at least not rubbish kind of thing. And that takes ages. Like it really takes a long time to make a clue that I, that I feel, okay, I'm, I'm at least satisfied with that. Um, and occasionally I make a clue and I'm really, and I think that's a good one. That's, that's going to work. And then, but overall, cause of the, the, the way we set puzzles, the, they're not just a set of clues with a set of answers. They're a set of clues with a set of answers, which then leads you to another kind of clue as it were, which then leads you to something else. Uh, and there's a, there's a further puzzle down the line. And then at the end of it, there's a kind of big penny drop moment where everything falls together. Well, that's, that's commonly the way it works. Um, and then when people write in the comments, I really liked that puzzle. That's, that, that, that's, that's massive, you know, for this, for the setter, for me, I don't personally, I think a lot of people just enjoy the process of writing individual clues. And I think you've got to enjoy that. If you're going to write for the back of the times, or, you know, if you're going to write two or three puzzles a week, um, where you're just churning out clues all the time, you've got to enjoy it. Uh, but for me, it's more the whole puzzle and it's, it's, it's, and I like, I like fit, I like putting in kind of geeky themes and introducing things that I'm kind of into. So if I can get something, which is about a kind of eighties video game, then so much the better, you know, and then obviously it's quite fun when people respond either saying, oh yeah, I grew up playing that, or I can't believe you're making me do this, which is kind of quite fun

feedback as well. I think it might be worth, I mean, I think again, going back to that very specific type of experience of sort of splitting between the creative thought, which you're trying to bring to working out what kind of answer a clue might be driving at. And you're, that's almost a kind of hypothesis generation process. You're, you're trying to diverge from where you are at the moment and think of possible answers and think of possible meanings for the clue. And then there's that sort of very sort of critical thinking system, system two type activity where you're perhaps going through potential options and enumerating them and thinking, okay, well, okay, if we, this starts with a J, you know, it's going to have this letter after it. And then with, and, and when you get the answer that you know, you, you have got the answer unambiguously, and you can, if you like close the browser tab on that, on that problem, when you're setting a crossword clue, that you, you, there are an infinite number of ways really to set any particular word, right? So to clue any particular word. So there's always the sense that you could have done better. So it isn't ever going to give you the same hit that solving a crossword is.

And I think there's a, there's a sort of study, there's a load of psychological literature in, you know, studying sort of puzzles. But one of the, one of the earlier studies by Sternberg and Davidson was, was looking at essentially positing that solving puzzles is, is, you know, the reason it's, it's appealing is it's about sort of comparing the hidden information within the puzzle with information you've already got in your, in your memory, and then generating almost like a third source of information, which is the novel, the novel information that arises from the combination of those two things. And I think that is a cryptic crossword in, in, in, in a nutshell, you know, it's, it's, there's hidden information in there, there's stuff that's in your brain about, you know, whatever the references and so on. And it's about the merging of those that creates, that creates the solution. And it's the generation of something new, you know, collectively between you and the, and the sort of setter, you know, there's this, there's this kind of process, which is quite profound.

Um, look, before we continue, I'm surprised we're already 30 minutes in, and we usually wrap up long before this, or at least start making moves towards that. But for me, it's zipped by, but we need to go somewhere, we need to round this all off. So I do want to perhaps bring in,

perhaps to look, cause, cause Chris has got a lot of experience in the world of crosswords. And I really, I haven't, you know, I've never, I've never been to crossword conferences and stuff, but, uh, there is this, one of the things that is the highly correlates with doing puzzles, um, is, is a psychological feature called need for cognition, which is something that was identified, I think several decades ago, but, um, is, is something that, you know, some is, is to a greater or lesser extent present in everyone, but, you know, is about really wanting to apply your thought processes to things, um, and feeling kind of anxious and bored. If you don't have something to think about and a problem to work on. And, um, that is correlated with, I mean, that's, that's a significant psychological feature in the sense that it's highly correlated with other things, which we know we can measure such as openness to experience and sort of epistemic curiosity and intellectual engagement. Um, and it's also, uh, it's linked to conscientiousness. Doing crosswords is linked to, so there's a crucial phrase there, uh, better, significantly better brain function. Um, but of course I don't think it's ever been established that there's the causation runs in the direction of doing crosswords. It raises your IQ or makes you less likely to have Alzheimer's, but, um, but you know, it could well be the other way around, you know, that, that, so, um, yeah, so it's, so it's basically the crossword urge is, uh, is, is well documented. It's, it's something that some people do have and others don't.

But I think that explains why I like doing a cryptic crossword before I go to bed. It is the most, it is the most settling thing because, and that's partly because the outcome doesn't, doesn't matter, you know, so it's not an actual thing that you're anxious about because it doesn't really matter if you solve it or not, but it's partly about giving your brain something to, you know, kind of almost meditatively consider, um, before, before going to sleep. Um,

Um, Chris, any response?

I was going to say, is that, is there a correlation between, I mean, in the crossword world, are crossword types, are they all the same type of person or is there a, is there a strong variation?

I have to say at this point, I feel like I'm in the wrong room. Um, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've

wandered in here, Chris, there is a crossword type. I think if you came to the annual magpie, well, well, I don't know. There's a, there's a, there's a magpie type, put it that way. Uh, the magpie crossword magazine has, um, fewer than 300 subscribers globally. Okay. So it's a small, it's a small group. It's not a double, it might double after this podcast goes out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no, that's true. Um, uh, but basically we're, we're, we're a small, we're a small group, but yes, if you walked into the room, uh, and looked around and asked people sort of what their, what they did for a living and things like that, you'd get a lot of, a lot of the same type of answers, not identical answers, but you get the same, you'd see the same type of person and you'd get the same type of answer.

Do they all bring their sandwiches in foil? That's what I'm sort of imagining for the lunch.

That's a good, that's a good question. We provide nibbles and, um, so I haven't tested that one out, but yeah, I expect, I expect this, I expect this sandwiches in foil going on. I don't, I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to diss our audience because, um, I don't want to make us sound like uber geeks, but that's, but we are basically pretty geeky people.

But they're not, I wouldn't say, I mean, crossword people are also interesting, right? I mean, they're not, they're not kind of boring, are they? Yeah. I would imagine. I mean, from my experience.

Well, I, I, I love meeting crossword people and I love talking about crosswords. Um,

I'm like a guardian of crossword people.

Guardians, guardians, great crossword. Um, I mean,

Yes, people who do it, that's the problem.

Oh, is it? Oh, okay.

I do the guardian crossword as well. So I shouldn't, but they, but they, they tend to be a particular, a particular type of person. Okay. I'll take your word for it.

Unless anything, anyone's got anything desperate they want to say. Um, we need to kind of conclude. There's a couple of things I want to ask, but, um, any, any, this is your last chance. Anybody?

I did wonder whether we'd get onto the subject of, um, of why it is that humans have evolved to enjoy pointless activities. It does, it does feel like a bit of a peacock's tail.

I, I, uh, I, well, that's one of the things, I mean, I think if you think about it as being an exercise in your, the use of cognitive faculties, which are, you know, of essential to your survival, well, it makes sense that we should, in some sense, enjoy using those faculties. It's a bit like playing sports or something, you know, we haven't evolved to play football. Um, but playing football scratches those itches, uh, to do the things that we have evolved to do. And, and so it must be the case.

I'm just picturing the kind of zombie apocalypse and you've got a room full of people and you're going, okay, we've got this, the sports guy, uh, you know, that person will be useful. You've got the one who can forage, the one who can hunt, you know, and like, oh, phew, luckily we've

got the crossword guy. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, but I, I would have thought there's probably an overlap between crossword people and things like mathematicians and engineers and physicists, I would imagine. And those people may not be, may not be essential on a daily basis, but at some point you'll be able to, you know, you'll, you'll need someone to set up a new coal mine to get the, to get the fuel. You know, it's people

like that. And also with a bit of lateral thinking, your crossword guy might go great and just kick the sports guy next to him in the leg and then run off. And so, you know, and so the poor sports guy

gets gotten by the, by the zombies. I mean, think back to the, you know, at some point when we were, you know, Australopithecus or something wandering around. So everyone looked at the apple and said apple too high up, can't get. But one of them said, no, I think if I get this stick and I break it with that rock and I use this stick to pull that branch, I can get that apple. That's the crossword guy. Well, I'm right behind them. Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to think of an anagram of people,

of apple then, but I couldn't, I couldn't. Right. We really do need to finish, but we, but we're not finishing. Chris, perhaps one, something you can leave us with is, I don't know if you've got a favorite clue you want set or solved, or I presume it's going to be related to crosswords or any kind of puzzle. And maybe we'll just leave it out there. And people can contact

1980s snooker reference. Okay, cool. We'll, we'll leave that out there. And actually that makes me think actually guys on a slightly sort of off topic thing is one of the things we need to do as a podcast is have a method of contact, right? Cause we don't really have one at the moment. Um, we could, we could make up an email right now and then actually make it. I mean, sorry, isn't

Chris going to explain the answer? Isn't that the idea? That's why you raised that one. No, I thought he was going to leave it there as unsolved to our audience. In order to explain

why you love that clue so much. The reason it's fun. Yeah. Why I, I, yeah, in order to tell you, but I can tell you why I like it without giving the answer, which is that people have enjoyed it. The two reasons I like it. People who've solved it, have enjoyed it. And it, it kind of, it kind of fell into my lap. I didn't have to really wrench it out of, out of, out of myself. It kind of, it just, it just came together in quite a serendipitous way. And so I'm, so I was quite happy with it. So this is like a personal one, which, which is recent and it's not the best clue in the universe, but it's just a recent one, which I'm happy with. Um, well, let's take

a vote on this. Um, and depending on what Chris Lear thinks, um, do we want to hear this? I think we should ask, we should at least get a view and it's the final, final decision is up to Chris Lear. But, um, I mean, do we want to hear the answer or not? I think we should not hear the answer.

I think it would be enigmatic to leave it out there hanging. Yeah. I think we should leave

it in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. All right. Okay. Right. Is there anything

else just to finish off? Only that normally you, you ask the question when we have a guest. I do

actually quite right. The question. So I thought that was it. I thought it was, what's your favorite

clue. I was, I was prepped for that. Do you know what? And I'm not exaggerating. I was just so absorbed by what you're saying. And I just, no, seriously, I'm not joking. I, this is, I've surprised myself here. This just zipped by for me. And so I've kind of forgotten all the other stuff. Yeah. So Chris, what, what would you do if you, if you didn't do what you do? I think that could be more elegantly expressed, but, um, yeah, if you weren't sort of compiling, you know, in another, in a parallel universe, what would you, what's your other job? What's your other life?

What would you be doing? Oh, well, I, I mean, I'm not sure how to answer that because my, my, this is my other life. My, my day job is being a computer programmer. My other life is, um, is, is, is setting is, is being a part of a group of people that, um, manages Crossroads magazine, setting puzzles and stuff. Um, if it was the 19th century and there weren't computers, what would you have been? I think, I think, I think it'd be great to be a board game designer, actually. I think it feels a bit similar. Yeah, it does. I think, but I mean, bear in mind that the type of person that I clearly am, I'm not, I'm not going to be a ballet dancer.

Is there, are actually, are cross, there a higher proportion of board gamers in the crossword

community than in the general public? Yeah. Yeah. You could put a pretty good, you could get quite a good bridge team out of crossworders. You could get a pretty good chess team out of crossworders.

The Venn diagram is, uh, is very populated. Are there any schisms in the world of crosswords?

Well, I think Chris was trying to, uh, to have one between the Guardian and the Times earlier. Um, there are differences of opinion about what's kind of okay. Uh, uh, there are, there are, there are, I wouldn't call it, I don't know anything, anything like a schism, but, but, um, there are, there are, there are, there are kind of schools of thought as it were. And the Guardian does have a different attitude to how it, um, includes its puzzles to the other main broadsheets, which. And everybody hates the telegraph. Uh, the telegraph. Yeah. People look down on the telegraph a bit cause it's slightly easier, but as a matter of fact, the same people set for all the broadsheets. So, um, they, they just have to, they just have to

adapt their style very slightly for different. So, so hold on. So that's, so what is it that makes the Guardian different, um, from the others? They're a bit more relaxed in their rules and

they allow people to have, um, they allow people to sometimes, you know, define a word without getting the exact part of speech correct and stuff like that. They're not as, they're not as grammatically precise and they're a bit more flexible. They just sort of say, well, if you've got the answer and you know that it's right, you know, surely that's good enough. And then there are a lot of people who are kind of like, no, it's not good enough to be, you know, everyone can say, you know, when you say what is the opposite of dog, everyone can say cat and that's definitely right. It's not a good clue.

Um, I've, I've, I've let us meander again here. Uh, we, we do have to stop. Um, I thought that was absolutely fabulous. Really enjoyed that. Brilliant. Um, so, um, yes, if I say, uh, thank you, um, as always to listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, I've been here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, but a special thank you, of course, to Chris Lear of the Magpie Crossword Magazine. Thank you for joining us. And, um, yeah, really enjoyed that. Fantastic. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. And goodbye.